Crop Mask Title:
National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2016 Land Cover for Continental United States (CONUS)

Coverage:
Continental United States (CONUS)

Spatial resolution:
30 meters

Satellite:
Landsat

Year:
2016

Version:
The NLCD version is dated 2016.

Organization:
U.S. Geological Survey
Sioux Falls, SD

Resource Contact:
Customer Service Representative
custserv@usgs.gov

Resource Abstract:
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in partnership with several federal agencies, has developed and released four National Land Cover Database (NLCD) products over the past two decades: NLCD 1992, 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016. These products provide spatially explicit and reliable information on the Nation’s land cover and land cover change. To continue the legacy of NLCD and further establish a long-term monitoring capability for the Nation’s land resources, the USGS has designed a new generation of NLCD products named NLCD 2016. The NLCD 2016 design aims to provide innovative, consistent, and robust methodologies for production of a multi-temporal land cover and land cover change database from 2001 to 2016 at 2–3-year intervals. Comprehensive research was conducted and resulted in developed strategies for NLCD 2016: a streamlined process for assembling and preprocessing Landsat imagery and geospatial ancillary datasets; a multi-source integrated training data development and decision-tree based land cover classifications; a temporally, spectrally, and spatially integrated land cover change analysis strategy; a hierarchical theme-based post-classification and integration protocol for generating land cover and change products; a continuous fields biophysical parameters modeling method; and an automated scripted operational system for the NLCD 2016 production. The performance of the developed strategies and methods were tested in twenty World Reference System-2 path/row throughout the conterminous U.S. An overall agreement ranging from 71% to 97% between land cover classification and reference data was achieved for all tested area and all years. Results from this study confirm the robustness of this comprehensive and highly automated procedure for NLCD 2016 operational mapping.

Resource Classification Categories:
NLCD Legend Land Cover Class Descriptions for Planted/Cultivated Crops Category

82 = Cultivated Crops -areas used for the production of annual crops, such as corn, soybeans, vegetables, tobacco, and cotton, and also perennial woody crops such as orchards and vineyards. Crop vegetation accounts for greater than 20% of total vegetation. This class also includes all land being actively tilled.

Reprocessing for MODIS-GLAM (250-meter) applications:
The 30-m NLCD crop mask was resampled to 250-meters spatial resolution for cropland data drilling on MODIS-GLAM. The resampling steps follow:

Pixel values with cultivated crops category of 82 were set to a binary value of 1.
Above binary data set at 30-meters was resampled to 250-meters spatial resolution.

Resource URL:
Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium
https://www.mrlc.gov/

Download URL:
Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium
https://www.mrlc.gov/data/nlcd-2016-land-cover-conus

Resource Citation:
Yang, L., et al. (2018). "A new generation of the United States National Land Cover Database: Requirements, research priorities, design, and implementation strategies." ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 146: 108-123.